Trivia / Svengoolie

• Acting for Two: Many characters are voiced by Koz, and dubbed in. Zallman T. Tombstone (a floating skull), Kerwyn (a rubber chicken who helps Sven with the Mailbag segment), and Durwood (a ventriloquist's dummy) are the three most often seen Non Human Sidekicks. Also "appearing" Once an Episode is "the guy behind the door," who interrupts Sven as he's saying his goodnights at the end of the show to tell him a bad joke. The hand is played by various people — mostly staffers at the station — but the voiceover is Koz.
• Adored by the Network: MeTV loves the show so much that it expanded to two-and-a-half hours in January 2023, allowing for fewer edits to longer movies and more time for sketches and segments. As well, "Svengoolie's Halloween BOO-nanza" has become the branding for all of the network's Halloween-related content in October.
• Creator's Pest: In 1995, Sven had a short-lived sidekick in Ed the Bat. WCIU head Neal Sabin hated the character for his high-pitched, electronically-altered voice, to the point where Ed's final segment had Sabin call him into his office and personally attack him with a club.
• The Danza: Doug Scharf as Doug Graves.
• Fan Community Nicknames: Chicken-throwers, as said in the merchandise ads for the show.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Bill Leff (Nostalgiaferatoo) ad-libs much of his material.
• He Also Did: Doug Scharf is a regular with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, played trumpet in the Late Show with Joan Rivers orchestra, wrote and conducted for Roy Orbison, Cher, Jeff Lynne, Phil Ramone, and for FernGully, and played for Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, and many more. You didn't notice him, of course, because he was a sideman.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Unlike some horror hosts, Sven doesn't rely strictly on Public Domain films, which makes for a wider variety of shows available but also makes officially releasing them to home video virtually impossible. Sven is OK with people trading copies of his old shows, but do not sell them.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • Son of Svengoolie has the the 300th Episode Retrospective, the 1994-on series got one in the form of the 100th Show Medley.
  • And Koz's run as Sven in general got one when it hit twenty-five years. The video was then reedited for reuse celebrating the 31st anniversary.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Koz began his career as Svengoolie by being a fan of the original Svengoolie and sending in some sketch ideas. He then became a writer on the show and for Jerry G. Bishop personally. When auditions came up for a new horror host, he got permission from Bishop to become the "Son of" Svengoolie.
  • Both Sarah Palmer (Gwengoolie) and Scott Gryder (IMP) of the Sven Squad were fans of Svengoolie before winning the Spawn of Svengoolie contest and becoming regulars on the show.
• Real-Life Relative: Anita X. Orcist, a recurring saxophone player, is played by Natalie Scharf, daughter of Doug Scharf, who plays Doug Graves and composes music for the show.
• Real Song Theme Tune: Screaming Yellow Theater and the first two years of Son of Svengoolie used Link Wray's "Rumble", with added sounds of a woman's scream. Son of Svengoolie and the first three years of Svengoolie used Billy Joel's "You May Be Right" as an ending theme.
• Recycled Set: Episodes of Screaming Yellow Theater from 1972 on and Son of Svengoolie used the stone wall backdrop from another horror show, Shock Theatre.
• Screwed by the Network: WFLD gave both Svens some rather unfair treatment.
  • The reason Screaming Yellow Theater was canceled in 1973 was that Kaiser Broadcasting, which had its own local horror host in Cleveland, took over WFLD and replaced Svengoolie with the horror host. Said show didn't last six months in the Chicago market but by then Bishop had moved on with his life.
  • In September of 1983, Son of Svengoolie had its time slot changed...to 10 AM. Of the six time slot changes the show went through^note It also had time slots of 3-5 PM, and 2-4 PM., it's debatable that 10 AM is the worst one. Twice, the show was moved to 11:30 PM, and, for a period, had a 90-minute instead of two-hour window, running from 1:30 PM to 3 (which turned out to be the show's penultimate time slot change, until it was changed one last time from 11:30 PM to Conclusion for its final four episodes before cancellation). Keep in mind that the station did this despite the show winning a Midwest Emmy Award for two consecutive years in 1980 and 1981.
  • In 1986 the fledgling FOX Network bought WFLD (notice a pattern?), and decided to cancel the show because it didn't fit with their vision of how the nascent network should present itself. That, and they wanted the time slot for The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: The famous use of rubber chickens originated when Bishop decided he wanted to have things thrown at him after a bad joke. As the usual rotten vegetables would be too difficult to clean up, it was decided to use rubber chickens, a classic vaudeville prop.
• Throw It In!: The origin of Svengoolie. Staff announcer Jerry G. Bishop was announcing the night's film and deciding as a gag to do it in a Transylvanian accent.
• Un-Canceled: Came back at the end of 1994 after being cancelled in 1986.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In Koz's 1978 audition tape, he was dressed just like Jerry G. Bishop's Sven. This was changed because it was decided that Koz's Sven should look different, so his Sven's green hair was changed to brown. This may be why the early Son of episodes still featured the likeness of Bishop's Sven on his coffin lid. Then WFLD told Koz to look less like a hippie (as the hippie movement had long died out by 1979), leading to his suit and top hat.
  • While Rich Koz was adamant that his character would be the "Son of Svengoolie", WFLD insisted on giving him a different name, as they were "out-of-towners" and unfamiliar with Bishop's character. Koz reluctantly came up with a few different names ("Baron Video" was stated to be his favorite, but his producer vetoed that name claiming that "video" was an archaic term, before MTV was launched). WFLD also wanted Koz to create a contest for his character's name with people writing in potential names, but this didn't work; in fact, the name "Son of Svengoolie" was only settled on right when the show started airing, hence why early advertising didn't use that name.
  • Son of was going to premiere in May 1979, but due to the aforementioned indecisiveness from WFLD, the premiere date was pushed back to June.

---